


Mired

by Walutahanga



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canonical Character Death, F/F, F/M, M/M, Misunderstandings, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 03:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6736948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Walutahanga/pseuds/Walutahanga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dee was born with four soul-marks, which means four chances at love. This is a very good thing when one of your soulmates is Kara Thrace, who has a habit of throwing off plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mired

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Syzygy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/743546) by [Saathi1013](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saathi1013/pseuds/Saathi1013). 



> I have no justification for this. None at all. I wanted Lee/Kara/Dee/Sam and I wanted soulmark fic and then this happened. 
> 
> To give a quick rundown of the rules: soulmarks here are a written description of a person, which is usually metaphorical but sometimes specific. Soulmates will find marks on the same place on each other's body and can confirm them through touch. Both multiple and single soulmarks occur, though there's no guarantee that multiples will balance out equally.

Dee was born with four soulmarks. This, according to the priests, was lucky. Many people had only one mark and only one chance of fulfilling the gods’ plans for their lives. It was also, according to her father, good that her soulmates were all older than her. Older meant more likely to be well-established and able to support a wife.

Dee sometimes got the feeling that her mother didn't quite agree, but her mother never openly disagreed with her father, particularly over Scripture.

“Four is good though,” she whispered to Dee one night as she was brushing her hair. “Four means that if one dies or is not a good Sagittaron, then you still have the others to choose from. Or to choose all three, if you like.”

“They might not be Sagittaron?” At eight years old, the thought had not yet occurred to Dee.

The only person she'd heard of with a soulmate outside their Tribe was the Larks' oldest girl who’d run off with a Picon man years ago. In her confused, childish logic Dee had equated a non-Tribal soulmark with bad behaviour. If she was good, she'd get a Sagittaron soulmark. If she was bad, she'd get a bad non-Sagittaron one. 

“Sometimes the gods’ plans for us are hard to see,” her mother said and Dee echoed obediently: “So say we all.”

* * *

It would be several years before Dee’s scores in mathematics obtained a scholarship to a high-end school. There, children of government officials and well-to-do merchants were educated along with the children of visiting diplomats and military officers. It was there that Dee first experienced how Sagittarons were perceived by outsiders.

 _Traditional, charmingly provincial, good workers_  were the nicer words used by the administration.  _Backward, uneducated_  and  _stupid_  were the more honest words used by the students.

Some of the Sagittarons students responded by becoming fiercely pro-Sagittaron; quick to pick a fight over any perceived insult. Dee, with no family fortune to protect her, learned quickly to blend into the background, to offer no allegiance to any one side, while remaining congenial with everyone. Silence may be interpreted as sympathy, and she unintentionally became known as a trustworthy confidant. 

The school was where she learned to put together information, to keep track of various allegiances and feuds within the school. By mapping out who was doing what, she steered clear of problems before they bubbled over. It was a skill that would serve her well in her future career. It was also how she learned that the differences between the Tribes were superficial at best. Everyone, no matter their Tribe, had the same anxieties and desires, over test scores and acne and whether the object of their crush likes them. 

“What will your parents say?” She asked Matthias Sharn oneday. He'd recently discovered his soulmate, who was the son of a Virgon diplomate. Matthias’ father was a Caprican Commander so Dee was prepared with sympathetic words for his misfortune. However, Matthias just shrugged carelessly and said: 

“They’ll just be relieved Leon isn’t covered in tattoos or belongs to a gang. I had a  _type_  before him.”

“Won’t they care about him being from Virgon?”

“My grandfather might have a few words to say, but he’s a xenophobic old prick anyway. No one listens to him.”

The casual dismissal made Dee reflect on the attitudes of her family and her people as a whole. Why should it matter that Kym Lark’s sister had married a man from Picon, or that Matthias loved a Virgon? Dee had already developed a quiet resentment for her parents’ beliefs. Because of them, she’d had to suffer through an awful fever that would never have happened if she’d been vaccinated like the school recommended. She was already counting down the days that she could make her own medical decisions.

She didn't believe her parents were right to refuse her medical treatment. So who was to say their attitudes about other Tribes were any more right?

* * *

As her secondary education drew to a close, she quietly began looking around for options to take her off-world. She could get into any university on Sagittaron, but that would mean being judged every day for every decision she made that went against her people. The problem was that studying abroad required money and lots of it. 

She was growing desperate when the military recruiters came to the school. Dee had never considered joining the military, but as the speakers went on, the more doors seem to open. It would mean getting off Sagittaron. It would mean being locked into serving for years, but she wouldn’t have to worry about feeding herself or finding accommodation. It would be all done for her. And if she ever decided to leave, she’d have a background that would assure her a place on any world she chose.

As the assembly broke up for lunch, she slipped down the hall to intercept the recruiters. She’d taken care that no one would see her, as she still had a few months before graduation and the other Sagittaron students were capable of making her life hell, or worse; telling her parents.

“I’m Sagittaron,” she blurted out to a startled woman in a smart military uniform. “How do I sign up?”

The woman had dealt with other Sagittaron students before. She gave Dee a set of forms to fill out with a pre-addressed envelope tucked inside a girly magazine, and a business card with a phone number in case of emergency.

“Once you submit the forms, there’s nothing your family can legally do to stop you,” she says. “But if you think they’ll try to force you to stay, this centre will house you between graduation and the start of boot camp. They’ll even send officers round to pick you up if you need it.”

“I don’t think I’ll need that,” Dee says, but has a sense of overwhelming relief. At last there is a way out. 

Later, she wished she had paid more attention to the recruiter. Admitting to her family what she’d done was ugly. Far uglier than she expected. When everyone had screamed themselves out and Dee had retreated to her bedroom, she could hear her parents talking with her aunts and uncles, and it occurred to her in a surge of panic that they might try to keep her here. They might lock her away in one of her cousin’s houses and the military would never know where to look.

In hindsight, fear was good. Fear had her putting on her shoes and packing her bag, and scaling down the side of her house in the middle of the night. She ran through the back alleys and caught a bus to the centre where the Caprican guard was surprised but not particularly phased by a grim-faced Sagittaron teenager carrying everything she owned, as if this sort of thing happens every did.

She stayed at the centre for a month until she was shipped off for basic training on Caprica. Her family sent letters; tearful admonishments or furious demands to come home. After the first few, she stopped reading them.

* * *

Being on Caprica is like being able to breathe for the first time.

She’s finally free from the weight of expectations of her people, from the pressure to fit and conform to ideas her entire being rebelled against. She hadn’t realised how much it was crushing her until its gone. Some people rib her about being Sagittaron, but when it becomes clear she didn’t share her people’s beliefs, she becomes just one of the crowd. Another soldier among many.

Occasionally she has a sudden, suffocating terror that she is all alone in the world. Those nights in her rack she traces her soulmarks in the dark and prays – really prays as she hadn’t since childhood – that the gods’ plans don’t involve a good Sagittaron.

* * *

When Dee is assigned to the Galactica, she comes to vaguely know Starbuck.

 _Everyone_  knows Starbuck.

She is legendary; a pilot seemingly blessed by the gods to sit in a Viper and show everyone how it was meant to be done. She is charming and foul-mouthed, an utter asshole and impossible not to want to please. Even the Commander seemed to have a soft spot for her, for gods-knew what reason. 

Dee hears Starbuck over the wireless and sees her passing through the halls, but Starbuck doesn’t pay Dee the slightest attention, and Dee is relieved. From what she’s seen, Starbuck seems to think she has a license to push people and she’s devastatingly good at it. The only pilot who seems to really be friends with her is Helo, and he’s so easy-going, he’d probably get along with the cylons if they ever showed up.

That changes entirely by accident one night when Dee is alone in her rack. She’d made sure everyone was either on-duty or drinking or fracking somewhere else, because she was making the cardinal error of opening up one of the letters from her family. She  _knew_  it was an error, of course, but she opened up a letter every now and then, on the logic that maybe this time they’d changed their minds.

This time wasn’t that time. She’s having a quiet cry when the door opens and a drunken Starbuck stumbles in.

“Frack. You’re not Helo.”

Dee quickly shoves her letter under her pillow, rubbing her face with her sleeve.

“Pilot’s racks are down the end,” she says, proud that her voice doesn’t wobble. “Which you should know, being a pilot.”

“I’m also three sheets to the wind,” Starbuck declares proudly, grinning at her as if they shared a marvellous joke. “What’s the matter, newby? Colonel Tigh tear you a new one?" 

“No.”

“Weird. That’s usually what you newbies are bawling about.” Starbuck stepped in to Dee’s dismay, closing the door behind her. “Well, come on.” She held out a bottle to Dee. “Drink up and tell Aunty Kara all about it.”

Dee hesitates, then decides that going along with Starbuck is probably less likely to end in tears than resisting her.

“I got a letter from home.” She accepts the bottle and takes a swig before passing it back. Starbuck pulls up a chair.

“Bad news or good news?”

“Neither.” Dee glances down at the pillow, at the venomous, poisonous words just out of reach. “Just a letter.”

“Let me guess. Homesick.”

“Gods, no.”

Starbuck must read something in her tone, because her smile fades imperceptibly before resuming.

“So it’s like that, is it,” she says. “The Sagittaron that pissed off her family by joining the military.” She hands Dee the bottle again.

“Yeah.”

“What’d they say? That you’re a weak traitorous whore for straying from the gods’ plan for you, or that you’ll never amount to anything and the military will chew you up and spit you back out?”

“The first one.” Dee takes a drink. “The second one was the letter before that.” She passes the bottle back. “Are you Sagittaron?” She doesn’t know what Starbuck’s Tribe is, but she’d descried it so perfectly it was like she'd been through it herself. 

“No, but it’s the same old story.” Starbuck plucks the letter out from under the pillow before Dee can stop her. She scans the first few lines and whistles: “Wow. They’re not very fracking original, are they. They couldn’t even come up with something of their own, they had to use Scripture quotes.”

“Out of context Scripture quotes,” Dee says, because somehow with Starbuck, her family’s poison becomes less powerful. Becomes something funny and pathetic and _their_ problem, nothing to do with Dee.

“Fracking gods, it is, isn’t.” Starbuck takes a swig and splashes booze on the letter. “This is a fracking crime against humanity, so I say we do humanity a favour and burn this piece of crap copyright.”

She tosses Dee a lighter and holds out the letter. Dee hesitates.

“Come on,” Starbuck says. “You can’t honestly think this is worth keeping?”

“You’re holding it,” Dee points out. “If I set fire to it now you’ll get burnt.”

Starbuck blinks then throws her head back and laughs.

“Okay, Lieutenant Health-and-Safety, we’ll do it your way.”

She tosses it on the floor and Dee sets fire to it, and they watch the edges curl up and scorch, falling to pieces.

“Good riddance to shitty writing,” Starbuck says, stamping it out with her boot. “Now you want to do something fun that would totally outrage and scandalise your relatives if they knew?”

“Yes, I would.”

“Want to frack a staunch Caprican who’s also a military pilot?” She leered at Dee, who laughed for real.

“Only if you’re offering.”

“Good.” Starbuck tugged Dee in close and kisses her, smelling of booze and flightsuit and the particular soap the military issued. She smells like home, Dee’s _real_ home, and Dee laughs as Starbuck tugs up her shirt.

* * *

It’s not until later when Starbuck’s passed out beside her that Dee gets a good look at the woman’s soulmarks. Most people are shy about showing them unless they’re Gemenon, and Starbuck’s always guarded hers zealously. Dee studies them with interest. She hasn’t met many other people with multiple marks and it looks like Starbuck has almost as many as she does.

The one curled around Starbuck’s right bicep reads ‘ _his brother_ ’. Dee chooses to read that in a generous light as soulmarks are often difficult to discern out of context. There’s another on Starbuck’s chest, following the curve of her left breast, that reads ‘ _pyramid champion_ ’. That seems fairly benign. Perhaps Starbuck’s part of a triad and the first mark means the brother of the pyramid champion?

There’s a third mark as well, running down Starbuck’s right thigh. Dee has to sit up a bit to make it out.

 _‘Voice in the black’_.

Poetic. Dee wishes she had something that sounded half as romantic. It could mean something utterly mundane though, like a radio announcer that Starbuck likes or someone she hears over the wireless –

Dee’s thoughts stutter to a halt.

She checks again, just to be sure. And yep, that’s ‘ _voice in the black_ ’ down Starbuck’s thigh, the same position that ‘ _bird on fire_ ’ is on Dee’s body. And Dee is pretty sure that Starbuck would hear her voice _a lot_  over the wireless. Dee’s the one who calls them home and relays orders. There’s no one else in CIC they’d hear half as much.

There’s only one way to be sure.

Dee reaches out, hesitates. It’s intrusive to touch someone’s marks without warning, but she just fracked the woman and it’s not like the mark is covered up. It’s a miracle she didn’t touch it already. She reaches down and very carefully lays her hand on Kara’s thigh, over the words. There’s a…there’s no words to describe it. It feels like a click, like everything aligns perfectly, edges lining up, corners snapping together. It feels  _right_.

Dee smothers a giggle and smiles fondly at Starbuck. Her soulmate. _‘Bird on fire’_  suits her on several levels. She’s one of Dee’s birds and she burns through life like she is on fire. There’s even been an emergency landing or two that were literally on fire.

Dee wonders if they share their other soulmates. It’s hard to tell with multiple marks. Generally you share at least one or two, though things get complicated after that. It’s very rare you get that perfect balanced mix, where everyone wears each other’s mark. For example, if you have two soulmarks, it’s not a guarantee they are soulmates to each other, and it’s entirely possible one of them will wear the soulmark of a fourth person. 

Dee wonders if Starbuck would get along with ‘ _old soul_ ’ or ‘ _too honourable_ ’, who are Dee’s stomach and bicep respectively.  ‘ _Adorkable’_  Dee suspects would not get along with Starbuck at all, because Starbuck is the kind of person who eats adorakable for lunch and picks her teeth with the bones.

Starbuck sighs and rolls over, flinging an arm about Dee’s waist.

“Go the frack to sleep,” she mumbled.

“Yes, sir,” Dee says and closes her eyes.

She wakes when her alarm goes off. When she gets back from the showers, Starbuck is still snoring. Dee nudges her.

“Starbuck.”

“Wha–?” Starbuck sits up, hair everywhere. She pauses when she sees Dee, giving her an incredulous up-and-down. “How much did I drink last night?”

That stings, but Dee decides to ignore it, as Starbuck is probably still hungover. 

“Three sheets the wind apparently,” she says. “You should get some pants on. The pilots are meant to be in the hanger bay in an hour.”

“Frack.” Starbuck rolls out of the bunk. “I need some goddamn coffee.”

Dee hands her the mug she’d collected from the mess, foreseeing exactly this conversation. Starbuck smells it.

“Heh, I take it back. You are definitely in the top ten.” She chugs the coffee and salutes Dee with the empty cup. “See you round… what was it? Dalia?”

“Lieutenant Dualla.”

“Sure.”

And just like that, Starbuck’s gone, leaving behind an empty coffee cup and a bit of ash on the floor.

* * *

Dee waits for Starbuck to approach her again. If Dee is ‘ _voice in the black_ ’, then surely Starbuck should suspect. It might even be why she’d approached her in the first place.

But Starbuck pays her no more attention than she had before. Dee studies her soulmarks in private, wondering if she could have had it wrong. But she'd felt it. That sense of rightness, of things settling into place. Starbuck has to be  _‘bird on fire’_. She makes Dee think of the phoenix in the scriptures, who would flee if you tried to catch it, leaving behind only burned fingers and a handful of firey feathers. But if you were patient and lucky, sometimes it would come to you.

Dee takes it as a sign; the gods’ plan clearly laid out. Don’t chase after her. Wait.

Then it occurs to her what a fracking stupid idea that is. It’s exactly the kind of thinking her parents slavishly adhered to, waiting for the gods to rescue them from their problems. And if she is Starbuck’s soulmate, then she doubts Starbuck is going to be impressed by someone who lets what she wants pass her by.

So she heads down to the pilots’ mess oneday, half-certain she’s making an enormous mistake, but unable to stand waiting any longer. It’s a reasonable action, she assures herself. Just ask the question, be calm and clear and logical, and if you’re wrong, then you’ve got a funny story to tell later.

She forgets that Starbuck is, as previously stated, an asshole.

“I remember you,” she says as Helo deals Dee in. “The Sagitarron, right?”

“ _Lieutenant_  Sagittaron,” Dee says, because she’s determined not to let Starbuck get to her without an answer.

“Right. Lieutenant.” She way she says it makes Dee want to cross her legs and she focuses on the hand she’s been dealt. Dee’s always been good at cards because she has a good poker face; good at hiding her feelings and pretending to be less experienced than she is. Tonight she has a good hand too. Helo bows out halfway through, followed by Boomer not long after and then it’s just Starbuck and Dee. 

“So tell me,” Starbuck says, cards fanned out, watching Dee over them with too-sharp eyes. “Hear from your family lately?”

It’s like a slap to the face. Dee looks at her, thinking that Starbuck might just have forgotten their whole conversation, but then she sees the faint smirk curving the woman’s lips, and realises: no, Starbuck remembers perfectly. She’s just trying to get a rise out of Dee. Trying to distract her and get her off her game.

“Not lately,” Dee says calmly, taking a sip from her drink.

“They haven’t sent you any letters?”

Dee smiles sweetly at Starbuck, meaning _‘frack you’_.

“They send me letters. But I haven’t bothered reading any since someone gave me a good idea and a lighter.”

She times it just as Starbuck is taking a drink, and Starbuck does a spit-take.

“You impressed her,” Helo remarks when Starbuck’s gone looking for the head.

“Yeah?” Dee says, pretending not to care.  

“Not many people can take a dig from Kara and not blink. If you were a pilot, I’d call you Frosty.”

Dee thinks of flying and shudders.

“No thanks.” She has zero interest in flying, and now, decidedly less interest in pilots.

Still, Starbuck is the first of her soulmarks she’s ever met, and if Dee doesn’t say anything, she’ll always wonder ‘what if’. So when the game breaks up, Dee grabs her courage and her pride in both hands and follows Starbuck outside.

“Starbuck.”

“Lieutenant. What can I do for you?” Starbuck looks her over, and while not precisely hostile, it’s not friendly either. It’s faintly mocking, as if she finds Dee somehow lacking.

Dee refuses to let it get to her.

“Do you have a moment?” She says. Starbuck shrugs and Dee says: “About the other week. When we –”

“And I’m gonna stop you right there. I’m not into repeat performances.”

“Yes, but –”

Starbuck rolls her eyes.

“Seriously, let it go, Lieutenant. We got shit-faced and had a sub-standard frack. That’s no reason for you to come round staring at me with hearts in your eyes.” It’s like a slap to the face, but Starbuck’s not finished. “You’re not my usual type anyway. Gods, I must have been fracked up.”

Dee’s hurt cools and hardens.

“Actually,” she says coldly. “I was going to ask that you don’t spread it around. I don’t want the commander hearing of any unprofessional behaviour. You might be able to get away with it, but I can’t.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever. We done here?”

“We’re done.” Dee walks away. Four soulmarks, and one of them is a complete write-off. She hopes her mother is right and the others are a surer thing.

* * *

She meets  _‘adorkable’_  as the world is ending. Sweet and kind and clearly utterly unused to talking to women. Her Billy.

She should feel guilty that she’s finding one of her soulmates as the people around her are crying out as marks scar over. All she feels is relieved that she’s one of the lucky ones. That none of her soulmarks scar over, that all of them are somewhere in the Fleet, that at least two of them are within reach, and one of them wants her. 

(It won’t occur to her until months later, as Billy is bleeding out beneath her and Lee’s hands, that they weren’t the lucky ones. They just got a little bit more time than everyone else.) 

* * *

Dee had wondered about Lee from the start.  _‘Too honourable’_ is an odd moniker, but it suits him. He has an upright by-the-book sharpness that means he’ll do whatever he believes is the right thing, whatever the cost.

Still, she isn’t sure until she and Billy are making out and she finds the words of his second soulmark on his collarbone. Billy turns pink when asked and begs her not to leave him, and she laughs herself stupid before showing him the soulmark on her bicep. 

She approaches Lee in the gym the next day, keeping herself calm and steady and just as ‘frosty’ as Helo ever said.

“I need to ask you a personal question,” she says. “How many soulmarks do you have?”

Lee pauses, taken aback by the question.

“Four,” he says slowly. 

Dee nods and bares her right bicep.

“I think this might be yours. Do any of yours correspond?”

Lee looks at the words  _‘too honourable’_  around her bicep. He is really taken off-balance and Dee congratulates herself for not letting Billy help with this. Billy gets flustered too easily and if this doesn’t go right, Dee can handle the rejection for both of them.

“Maybe,” Lee says at last, and pushes up his sleeve. The words  _‘unexpected treasure’_ lay across his skin. “Should we…?”

“Lets.” Dee tries not to be too eager as she touches his bicep. There’s that click again, that ineffable sense of rightness she’d felt with Starbuck and Billy. Lee is her soulmate, absolutely and without a doubt. 

His fingers graze her bicep over her words, and he lets out a breath, like it’s not the result he’s expecting. Bad surprise or good surprise?

 “You’re definitely unexpected,” he says as last, but he’s smiling, so Dee takes it for a good thing.  

“Billy also has a soulmark here,” she says, tapping her collarbone. Lee puts his fingers to the same place on himself.

“Me too,” he says cautiously. “It says ‘ _sacrifice’_. I never knew what that meant.”

“We’re pretty certain his is yours,” Dee says. She pauses a beat and says: “It says ‘ _the Commander’s son_ ’.”

Lee blinks, then laughs out loud.

“You’re joking." 

“No,” Dee says, allowing herself to smile. “I guess the gods wanted there to be no mistake.”

“I’ll say.”

“Would you like to meet us for a drink on Cloud Nine? No pressure. Just to talk things out.”

Lee considers it, then nods with growing enthusiasm.

“I’d like that a lot.”

* * *

They had something special with Billy. Dee felt it the first time Lee slid into the booth across from them and something just clicked into place. They had that one in a million chance; that perfectly balanced triad where all three bore each other’s marks.

Lee and Billy talked about politics, which Dee was bored by, but that they both shared an unexpected passion for. Billy approached it from an idealistic point of view, Lee from a more cynical position, but their expressions glowed as they talked, which was enough to keep Dee entertained despite the subject matter. She’d glimpsed then, a future between the three of them. A comfortable future where Lee and Dee would shelter Billy’s idealism from a harsh world, and Billy and Dee would remind Lee that he wasn’t too old for a bit of silliness, and Billy and Lee would coax Dee to let down her guard.

Dee loses half of that future with one bullet, and nearly loses the other half with a second.

She waits in Life Station near Lee’s bed and is there when he wakes up hours later. His gaze seeks her out automatically even as his fingers creep up to touch the scarred over mark on his collarbone, asking the question he already knows the answer to.

“Where’s Billy?"  

There’s just the two of them after that, and something very important has been lost. Lee is still Lee, she still wants him, but with Billy they lose some sense of joy. Of hope. There are barriers between them that never quite lower, whether because of the pain of losing Billy or because Billy isn’t there to add that indefinable  _something_. 

“You don’t think it was my fault?” Lee says quietly, the first time they have sex. They’re lying together and there’s this gaping emptiness they can’t seem to fill. He’s touching his collarbone, the rough scarring where Billy’s mark was. “My mark said sacrifice. Maybe if we hadn’t met–”

“No.” Dee catches Lee’s hand and pulls it away from his collarbone. “No, your mark could have meant anything.  _Anything_  at all. And even if you hadn’t come, Billy and I still might have gone there, and he still might have died. Either it was bad luck, and you never could have predicted it, or it was fate, and nothing you could have done would prevent it.”

She says it firmly to silence her own echoing doubts. She’s lost one soulmate. She’s not losing another.

* * *

She manages to avoid talking to or being around Starbuck until New Caprica. She’s aware that Lee has feelings for the woman, she’s not an idiot. Even if she hadn’t heard scuttlebutt, she knows that Lee has a mark saying ‘ _unforgettable’_  exactly where Starbuck has ‘ _his_   _brother’_. Once you know that Starbuck was once engaged to Lee’s brother, it all starts making sense. 

It’s a morbid sort of secret, knowing that your soulmate is secretly in love with another woman, and him knowing that you know, but only you know that she’s also  _your_  soulmate. It’s a twisted up problem that a lot of people would say has an obvious solution, but clearly those people have never been in a relationship.

For a start, Starbuck is a fracking mess. Lee must know that on some level too, or he’d have just gone for it years ago. But like Dee he’d steered clear, directing his ship to calmer waters. That doesn’t mean you’re not occasionally swamped by moments of shivering desire or wrenching anxiety, it just means you ride it out and let it go.

For another matter, Starbuck has already made her choice in Anders, and honestly Dee thinks that’s the most emotionally intelligent decision Starbuck’s ever made. Anders may or may not be her soulmate, but he seems preternaturally good at chivvying her into a good mood and doesn’t seem phased by her occasional fits of explosive anger. He must be blessed with the patience of the gods, because Dee only had a one-night stand and she’d been ready to throttle Starbuck.

Yes, it all worked out in the end, Dee decides. She can even take some vicarious enjoyment in Starbuck’s contentment and be proud of herself for not holding anything against anyone. They’d all made mature decisions and could now reap the rewards.

She forgets, again, just how easily Starbuck can throw off a plan. 

* * *

It starts innocently enough with the ground-breaking ceremony. Lee and Dee meet with Starbuck and Anders, and Starbuck has apparently decided that today she is going to be charming. 

“Better listen to your better half, Lee,” she says with a smirk, and steals Dee out from under Lee’s arm. Another woman would have been smarter and tried to ease her and Lee out from under the inevitable frack-up on the horizon, but Dee is no more immune than anyone else when Starbuck decides to use her charisma. She lets Starbuck wrap a companionable arm about her waist and lead her to the booze.

After that it's dancing and drinking, and come the final Raptor flight, Dee has made only a token effort to extract herself. Every time she brings it up, she's shouted down. Even Anders gets in on it, saying she could sleep in his and Starbuck’s tent.

“I’ll sleep on the floor,” he says gallantly. “Leave you and Kara the bed.”

Kara splutters her drink. (Dee knows vaguely it’s a bad idea that she’s started to think of her as Kara instead of Starbuck).

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” she says with a grin at Dee, and just like that their history stops being a humiliating disappointment and becomes their shared secret. 

“Wait.” Lee looks between them. “You two –”

“Just the once. She was even nice enough to wake me up on time for my meeting and bring me coffee.”

“So considerate,” Anders says and looks at Kara. “Why don’t you ever bring me coffee?”

“Because that’s usually when I’m fracking you awake.”

“Oh yeah. Never change.”

Lee is looking at Dee.

“I didn’t know Starbuck was your type,” he says, and it’s the looking of a man  _thinking_  things.

“She brought me booze,” Dee says lightly. “But she hogged the blankets after, so I don’t know it was worth it.”

“Don’t lie,” Kara says with the happy confidence of someone who can have anyone and knows it. “Three orgasms says I am so worth it.”

Dee covers her face to hide her embarrassed laughter while Lee pats her sympathetically on the head and Anders orders re-fills.

* * *

Stupid Starbuck. Stupid pretty Starbuck with her pretty face and pretty hair and pretty everything. Stupid Lee too.

Dee is fairly certain she’s not saying this aloud. Mostly certain.

The drunken conversation had taken a turn later in the night from sexcapades (of which Anders and Kara apparently had a  _lot_ of) to soulmarks. Dee is sitting very still and focusing on not saying anything, because she’s just sober enough to know she’s drunk enough to say anything. 

“…so I have this one on my back,” Anders is saying. “Scarred over since I was a kid, I have no idea who it was.”

“I’m sorry,” Lee says, and Dee knows he’s thinking of Billy.

“No big deal,” Anders shrugs. “It happens and I’ve got three others. Kara’s is here –” he points to his chest “ – and there’s another here and another on the sole of my right foot.” 

“’s funny,” Lee says blearily. “I’ve got one on my foot too. Fracking awkward whenever I try to take a look at it.”

“Me too. Good to avoid pictures leaking to the press though.”

“I’ve got four,” Kara announces happily. “One here –” She traces the shell of her ear “–that’s scarred over. And another here, here, and here.” She touches her chest, her bicep and her right thigh in succession. “Pretty sure ‘ _pyramid champion_ ’ is Anders.”

“And ‘ _his brother_ ’ is probably Lee,” Anders adds. He looks around the table at the sudden silence. “What? We all know it is.”

“Okay, cutting you off,” Kara of all people says, moving Ander's drink out of reach.

“Being soulmates doesn’t mean it always works out,” Dee says hurriedly, eager to ease them out of the awkwardness of the moment. “I found one of my soulmates and that didn’t work out.”

“You mean Billy?” Lee says.

“No, the bird one. They’re not dead, it just… didn’t work.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Well.” She shrugs. “Now you know.”

“ _Now_  I’m curious,” Kara says. “What are they, civilian? They can’t be military or I’d have heard some scuttlebutt.”

“Or I am very discrete,” Dee says, but Kara isn’t put off.

“No, the have to be military. That’s where you spend all your time. Is it Geata? It’s Geatea, isn’t it.”

Dee wrinkled her nose.

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Frack, that was my best guess. Lee, help me out here. Where’s this mark?”

Lee holds up his hands helplessly.

“Sorry, Starbuck. Girlfriend-privilege. Can’t give you that information.”

“Oh come on, it’s not like I haven’t seen any of it before.”

“Yes, but clearly you weren’t paying attention,” Dee says, rolling her eyes. “Can we talk about something else please?”

“No, I’m going to get this. Lets see, who else have you fracked besides Billy, Lee and–”

Kara pauses.

Oh gods, Dee thinks. It’s taken a few years, but Kara’s finally getting a clue.

She surges to her feet.

“So I need a refill. Anyone?”

She’s barely managed to take two steps when Kara’s hand closes over her wrist. Kara yanks Dee round – frack, she’s strong – and looks her over with the same look she gives Vipers when she’s trying to work out a problem.

“Fracking hell,” she says and drags Dee around the tables toward the tent settlements. Dee digs her heels in and tries to brace, but Kara’s drunk, strong and determined. Lee and Sam jog to catch up to them.

“Um, Kara,” Anders says. “What are you doing?”

“Checking something.” She shoves Dee into a nearby tent and grabs at the other woman's belt.

“What the frack?!” Dee’s voice might climb an octave. “What are you doing?”

“Show me your mark.”

“No!”

“Show me your gods-damned mark, Dee!”

“Should we come back later?” Anders says in the doorway, Lee right behind him with a half horrified, half-fascinated look.

“Shut up, Sam,” Kara says and finally gets Dee’s buckle open. She yanks Dee’s pants down to mid thigh, ignoring Dee’s yelp of protest.

Kara’s fingers ghost over the lettering on Dee’s thigh and she gives a soft, disbelieving laugh.

“Lieutenant, you are the best damn triad player I’ve met in my life.”

Dee is frozen, mostly in disbelief as Kara leans in and her warm breath brushes Dee’s mark. Dee may or may not squeak, toes curling inside her shoes.

“I’m your bird on fire,” Kara says. “That’s  _perfect_. I love it. Why the hell didn’t you say anything?”

Dee takes a step back, fumbles to get her pants up again.

“I tried. You made it clear you weren’t interested.”

Kara stood up.

“When did I say that?”

“In the pilot’s hall, when I came up to you later.”

“Did I?” Kara squints thoughtfully. “I do tell my one-nighters to piss off, but I always figured a soulmate would be more persistent.”

“Frack you,” Dee says, and leaves, shoving past Anders and Lee on the way out.

* * *

It’s Anders who comes to find her, of all people.

“I’m surprised you left them alone,” Dee says bitterly.

“They have to straighten some things out.” Anders signals for a water from the bartender. “I wanted to talk to you anyway.”

“Yeah? What about?” She really couldn’t care less about her soulmate’s soulmate.

“Do you have a soulmark right about here?” He touches his stomach, the same place on her where ‘ _old soul_ ’ lies. Her expression must give her away. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Mine says ' _old soul_ ',” she manages to get out. “It could be anyone.”

“Mine is ‘ _quiet moon_ ’.”

Dee thinks about that, rolling the taste of moonshine over her tongue with the words. ‘ _Quiet moon_ ’. That’s poetic. Romantic in all the ways she'd once dreamed of as a girl. 

“Show me,” she says and Anders lifts his shirt happily enough. There it is, follow the curve of his navel. She touches it tentatively, and feels the _rightness_  of it. The click of one last puzzle piece settling into place.

She sits back and lifts her own shirt so he can see the writing on her stomach. He leans in, fingertips tickling her skin.

“That’s mine,” he says and the warm possessiveness of his voice makes her shiver. She lets her shirt drop back into place. She can’t help but feel slightly cheated. The whole time with the Kara/Lee mess, the thought had been in the back of her mind that even if she lost Lee to Kara, there was still one more soulmate out there. One more chance to make it right. And now she’s found him, and he’s as deeply mired in this tangle as she is.

Apparently the gods, if they exist, intend Dee to walk this path of fracked up pilots and slightly less fracked up pyramid players. So much for emotionally healthy decisions.

But Anders - no, Sam - is smiling at her as if she’s all and everything he ever wanted (even though they both know she’s only one third of everything he ever wanted), and she feels guilty for resenting him for not being exactly what she hoped. 

“What made you think of me anyway?” She asks.

“Well we share two soulmates, so I thought –”

“ _Two_  soulmates?” The last she’d counted, they only shared one.

Sam had the grace to look uncomfortable.

“The mark on my foot, it says ‘ _righteous sun_ ’.”

“Oh.” That's a pretty good metaphor and/or pun for Lee. “Why didn’t you ever say anything to him?”

“He doesn’t go for guys.”

Dee thinks of Billy and snorts.

“Trust me, you really should have asked.”

“Seriously?” Sam looks puzzled and annoyed. “But Kara and I were always trying to frack him, and he never seemed interested.”

“Depends on your approach.” Dee recalls Lee remarking irritably a few months back of how Kara and Sam kept getting drunk and making out in front of him. He’d thought they were doing it to annoy him. “Did you come out and  _say_  you wanted to frack him?”

“No…”

“There’s your problem then. Lee can be dense when it comes to sex. I was hinting for weeks before I finally came out and said it.” Dee counts back the months and adds: “Also, you guys are assholes for trying to seduce  _my_  boyfriend.”

“Ah.” Sam smiles sheepishly. “I guess we were, yeah.”

 Dee thinks about Lee and Kara, doing whatever they’re doing right now, and drains her drink. She looks at Sam with his stupid pretty face and stupid long arms and stupid strong hands.

“Make it up to me,” she says.

* * *

She wakes up the next morning in Kara’s bed. Kara’s not in it, but Sam is, one arm wrapped around her waist, breath warm on the back of her neck. When Dee starts to get up, he mumbles and pulls her back.

“Stay,” he murmurs.

“I have to get back to Galactica.”

“Frack the Galactica.”

This is kind of muffled by him kissing her neck, while one hand slides under the covers. Dee giggles and lets him pull her closer.

The tent curtain swishes.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” Kara says, and Dee just about falls out of bed. Kara is in the act of pulling off her shoes. “Looks like you guys had the same idea we did.”

“I –” Dee is  _mortified_. Being caught in bed with Kara’s boyfriend is completely ruining her big exit last night. Not to mention hazardous to her health with Kara's penchant for starting fights. But Kara just prods Sam and says:

“Move over, I want in.”

And Kara crawls into bed on the other side, squirming to fit in the small space left. Dee’s fairly certain she groped her on purpose. Kara settles in and closes her eyes, adding sleepily:

“I left Lee in a field somewhere. One of you should probably go find him.”

Even when you’re choking on outrage, mortification and sheer what-the-hell, Kara can make you kind of admire her. It’s fascinating being around her just to see what she’ll do next.

“I’ll get him,” Dee sighs, and gets up.

“Come back afterwards,” Sam says. He loops one big arm about her shoulders and presses a gentle kiss to her mouth. “We’ll get breakfast." 

* * *

Dee finds Lee unconscious in the middle of a field. She get clothes on him, and dismisses his abject apologies.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I fracked Sam so we’re even.”

That shuts him up.

“Oh and Sam’s my other soulmate,” she adds, and goes to find his other shoe. She leaves the revelation of whose Sam’s last soulmate is, figuring Sam can take care of that one himself.

She leads Lee to Sam and Kara’s tent. She’s not sure if he’s being quiet because he’s angry or just shocked. Sam and Kara are awake, if the squeaking of the bed is any indication, but Dee and Lee wait outside. It's polite to wait for an invitation, even if Kara wouldn't. Gods, Kara would not only walk straight in, she'd want to give directions and a running commentary.

“So you and Kara,” Lee says finally. 

“Yeah.”

“Maybe we’re a triad.” He looks hopeful. “Like we were with Billy.”

“There’s Sam as well,” Dee adds, and Lee’s face falls a little.

“Well,” he says. “I’m sure we can work something out.”

Oh gods, Lee’s face is going to be  _hilarious_  when Sam breaks it to him. Dee is pretty certain Lee’s problem with Sam isn’t his gender so much as the overall… Sam-ness of him. Billy had been sweet and shy and happy to let someone else take the romantic lead. Sam, though infinitely patient and laidback, definitely won’t let Lee have the upper hand all the time. Dee hates the word ‘alpha male’ but that’s exactly what the two of them are and it’s going to cause friction.

Maybe they’re a non-sexual bond. You see that, here and there. People who love each other fiercely, but have no sexual interest in one another. Whatever – that’s Sam and Lee’s problem to sort out.

* * *

Sam and Kara emerge finally. Lee hesitates between taking her arm or Dee’s, but Kara pre-empts him again and loops an arm about Dee’s waist.

“You’re walking with Sam,” she tosses over her shoulder. “You two have shit to sort out.”

Dee agrees, but that leaves her with Kara, who she hasn’t had a meaningful conversation with in years, and who has just discovered that they’re soulmates. And that Dee knew all along. Awkward isn’t going to cover it.

“Lieutenant,” Kara breathes in her ear. “You’ve been a very bad girl.”

Dee has a full body shiver. Her face feels hot.

“Does everything have to come back to sex?”

“Why not? Apparently we could have been fracking for years now. I’m just catching up on lost time.” She stops Dee with a hand in the middle of her back. “Why  _didn’t_  you say something?”

“I was going to,” Dee admits. “I even came looking for you. But there was something I told you in confidence, a secret, and you threw it in my face. In public. Over a poker game.”

Kara winces a little.

“Ah.”

“I could understand if we were fighting,” Dee adds. “But it was just a game. Being with you suddenly didn’t seem…” She picks her words carefully. “…wise.”

“I figured it was something like that,” Kara says. She tugs Dee until she steps closer and adds with uncharacteristic seriousness: “You know I’m a mess, right? Sam knows; more than anyone else, less than he thinks. I’m a frack-up, and it is inevitable that I will frack this up.”

“That’s a shitty sales pitch.”

“It’s the truth. But you know what also is true? The cylons are going to catch up. We can’t stay hidden forever and when they come –” Kara makes a dismissive gesture. “None of us are going to be around long enough to get over me fracking up. I can give you damn fun time until the cylons get here. Or we all die of disease or starvation. Either way, I’m a solid investment.”

In the end it’s not Kara’s words that make Dee’s decision. It’s the warmth of her hands on Dee’s hips, and the memory of what it felt like to have Billy’s words scar over, a lifetime of possibilities slipped through her fingers.

Dee leans in and kisses Kara’s mouth.

“Still a shitty sales pitch. Good thing I’m an easy mark.”

* * *

When all four of them sit down to breakfast, Lee is faintly shell-shocked, torn between staring at his plate and staring at Sam. He hadn’t believed that Sam was his soulmate until Sam took off his shoe and made Lee touch the words. Kara doesn’t help, teasingly asking who’s going to top for their first time.

“Kara!” Lee sounds scandalized. 

“I just want to know. I need accuracy for my mental images.”

Dee nearly spurts orange juice out her nose. She manages to swallow before laughing. She looks at Sam, who's grinning at Lee and Kara's antics like it's the most adorable thing he's ever seen. 

“Tell me a story,” she says.

“What kind of story?”

“Any story. Say if we’d all met on Caprica, before all of this.”

“On Caprica, huh.” He thinks about it. “Well first I’m going to say that you and I met first.”

“Did we?”

“Yep. You ran away from Sagittaron and ended up on Picon, just in time to meet a young pyramid player who hadn’t quite been discovered yet. We fall madly in love and have a whirlwind romance.”

“I like this already.”

“There’s no sex,” Kara complains.

“I’m getting there. Anyway, Kara and Lee meet through a random quirk of fate. They happen to be in the same bar, and Lee insults Kara’s team, and Kara punches him, and they end up fracking because… it’s Kara and Lee.”

Dee laughs and Lee shoots a sideways look at Sam like he’s not sure if he should be mad or not.

“Anyway, they’re both military but they’re not in the same section, so regulations don’t matter. They get engaged and the Admiral gives them tickets for a pyramid game – one where this hot-shot pyramid player is taking the world by storm. With his lovely, photogenic girlfriend as well.” Sam adds this with a wink at Dee. “Anyway, the pyramid player happens to look up and see this really hot young couple in the crowd – Kara’s making a lot of noise and cheering, because it’s Kara – and because they’re just so pretty to look at, he asks one of the organisers to bring them aside later.”

“Isn’t that cheating on Dee?” Lee objects.

“No, because Dee and I have always fantasised about another couple, and when she sees them, she agrees they’re perfect. They’re flattered to be approached by the great Sam Anders –”

“And girlfriend,” Dee adds.

“And girlfriend,” Sam corrects himself. “And we all go out for drinks. And while we’re at the bar, I happen to notice that Kara has a soulmark in the same place I do, and I ask her ‘Ms Thrace, you wouldn’t happen to have another mark on your right thigh would you’. And she says ‘frack off, I’m hitting on your girlfriend’.”

Kara cackles and even Lee smiles at that.

“And so we all start comparing marks there in the bar, and we realise that we all match. A perfectly balanced quad.” Sam’s voice is softer now, and Dee leans forward to hear better. “Kara wants to get married right away – that night even – and I think it’s a great idea, but Lee and Dee talk us into being more cautious. And we’re all glad later, because then we can have Lee’s family at the wedding. Lee and Kara get themselves stationed on a Picon Battlestar so we can all be closer together, I buy us a big fancy house with a view of a lake, and in the mornings we can get up and look out over the water.” He stops to drink the last of his juice. 

“And then?” Dee says, wanting to hear the rest. “How do we escape when the cylons attack?”

“We don’t.” Sam shrugs. He rolls the empty glass between his hands. “We all die in the initial attacks. It’s very quick, and none of us know what happened.”

“Oh.” Dee sits back, disappointed.

“Way to wreck a good story,” Kara says, nudging Sam under the table.

“I liked it,” Lee volunteers unexpectedly. He looks at Sam. “Because we still had those years together. That’s the moral of the story, isn’t it? That we did what we could with the time that we had.”

“Not a moral,” Sam says reflectively. “More a hope. Everyone dies in the end – that’s inevitable – but for a little while we were happy.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was heavily influenced by Saathi1013's series Ephemerides, which got me into Lee/Kara/Dee/Sam in the first place. At least one line about Dee being 'the voice that guided us, out there in the black' I turned into a soulmark.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Even when I give it all away, I want it all](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11610057) by [redroslin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redroslin/pseuds/redroslin)




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